Planking September 5, 2011

A 20-year-old man plunged to his death after “planking” on a seventh-story balcony in Brisbane, Australia, the Brisbane Times reported Sunday.

Police told the Times the man fell from a unit block on Main Street in Kangaroo Point shortly before 4:30 a.m. local time.

Paramedics could not revive the man despite working on him for 20 minutes, the Times said. He was pronounced dead a short time later.

Police said they could not say if the fatality was Australia’s first planking death.

“It is what we’ve been fearing,” Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett told reporters, according to the Australia Associated Press.

“Planking,” a growing craze in Australia and spreading elsewhere, involves somebody lying flat on one’s stomach, stiff as a plank, in unexpected places.

Plankers have shown up on top of signs, train tracks, fire hydrants, clotheslines and motorcycles.

Plankers often take pictures and post them on social media such as Facebook, where the Planking Australia page had over 55,000 fans early Sunday morning, or Tumblr. On Friday, the Herald Sun of Melbourne, Australia, reported that police won’t tolerate the dangerous stunts. Penalties range from fines to jail in extreme cases. “Clearly, conduct that threatens public safety will not and should not be tolerated,” a Victoria state police spokeswoman said. Planker David Tyrrell, from Gladstone, Queensland — where a man was charged with allegedly planking a police car — told the Herald Sun there was no need for dangerous stunts. “Those guys would be a minority — the people that do something stupid, like a traffic light,” he said. Tyrell also told the Herald Sun he has planked naked. The Facebook group said May 25 will be annual planking day.